"You go someplace so that you can learn something that is not in front of you." Sam Gilliam, known as one of America's leading abstract artists, discusses the importance of exploration and a curious mind, a need for 'investigation' in art. Says Gilliam, "Let's call it spirit." Gilliam invites The Artist Toolbox host John Jacobsen into his private studios in Washington, DC. Gilliam reveals how, in his early works on canvas, he began adding several layers of multiple media, single-handedly creating a signature, and now classic and often copied, art form. Fearlessly exploring new materials while maintaining a consistent commitment to long-standing principles of art, Sam Gilliam is internationally-known and enormously respected. Now in his fifth decade as an artist, Gilliam talks about his enduring fascination for things such as "storm, sunsets, landscape." The Artist Toolbox peels back the layers of this inventive master artist in a candid interview with one of the wisest artists working today. "The whole world is about tinkering...the more serious I got, the more fundamentally I felt that making, building, thinking-it's just important," says Gilliam. "It's what the world is about."